Glenn Greenwald
Politics • Culture • Writing
Steve Bannon's Contempt Charges Reveal Historic Double Standard; Interview with RFK Jr.'s Running Mate Nicole Shanahan on the 2024 Election and More
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June 08, 2024
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Good evening. It's Thursday, June 6. 

Tonight: Steve Bannon, one of President Trump's top White House advisers in the first part of his presidency and currently one of his closest and most important allies, was ordered to surrender to a federal prison on July 1, three weeks from now. Bannon had been out on bail pending an appeal of his 2022 conviction on charges of refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena that ordered him to testify about the events of January 6; he had a variety of legal arguments as to why he was not required to do that. Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison by a court that rejected those defenses and was allowed to be out on bail pending appeal. The appellate court rejected his appeal, and now the judge has ordered him to surrender to prison, even though he has more appeals left. 

In addition to President Trump himself, who was just convicted of 34 felonies on obviously dubious and – no pun intended – trumped-up charges – Bannon is not the first top Trump aide to be jailed for alleged violations of a congressional subpoena. In March of this year, President Trump's trade advisor, Peter Navarro, reported to a federal prison to serve a four-month sentence on similar charges. And, of course, a large group of key Trump White House officials and other allies, including General Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and many others have also been convicted and imprisoned, or at least accused and convicted of crimes, all of which is unprecedented in all of American history. 

Indeed, Congress often issued subpoenas to Washington officials that are simply ignored or violated, in one way or the other, where these officials concoct excuses as to why they don't have to appear, that this conflict between the executive branch on the one hand and Congress on the other, is a central part of our system. It's been happening for decades if not centuries, and almost never do those events result in anything close to what has been done to Peter Navarro and now to Steve Bannon. We'll go through the relevant history to illustrate how, yet again, the Biden DOJ and Democratic prosecutors are so transparently weaponizing the legal system and judicial system against their political enemies for partisan ends. 

In general – as I learned firsthand when I started writing about politics in the second term of the Bush administration, and then into the Obama administration where there was a lot of talk at the time about the potential that Obama would prosecute Bush officials and CIA officials for committing crimes like torture, kidnapping and illegal domestic spying – the consensus in Washington politics and media – believe me, has long been for decades – that only banana republics prosecute their political enemies and prosecute their prior administration. I never agreed with that consensus. Indeed, I wrote countless articles against it and even a 2011 book arguing against it and titled “With Liberty and Justice for Some,” but these prosecutions of Trump and his allies do not represent an abandonment of that rotted Washington rule. If it did, I would be cheering for it. Like so many other things, it represents merely a temporary suspension of this Washington rule for one and only one political official named Donald Trump. 

Then: We will speak to Nicole Shanahan, now officially the vice presidential running mate of RFK, Jr. If polls hold up at all, that independent ticket will be one of the most successful independent presidential candidates in decades. Bobby Kennedy’s choice for a running mate baffled a lot of people. While Shanahan is reasonably well known in Silicon Valley – in part for accumulating a net worth estimated at $1 billion, largely, but not entirely, as a result of her marriage to one of the world's richest billionaires, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and in part due to her own accomplishments, an initiatives – very few American citizens had ever heard of Shanahan and know very little about her, in large part because she never held elected office of any kind. 

That does not mean that she has been uninterested in politics. She has indeed donated a large amount of money, primarily, if not exclusively, to Democratic Party candidates, including Hillary Clinton, Pete Buttigieg and the 2020 campaign of Joe Biden, as well as more left-wing candidates and causes. That, of course, raises a lot of questions about her current political views (which can reasonably change for a lot of people), her past political trajectory, and the role of big money in our politics. We'll talk to her about that, as well as her views on current U.S.-financed wars in Ukraine and Israel, the issue of online censorship, whistleblowers, and much more. 

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now. 


 

After I first began writing about politics, in late 2005, within the next couple of years, one of the issues I talked about most often, was how there was a two-tiered justice system in the United States, where financial leaders, and especially political elites, are largely immunized from the rule of law. Oftentimes, this was taking place in the controversy over many obvious illegal programs that the Bush and Cheney administration had adopted in the name of the War on Terror, torturing detainees, kidnaping those people off the streets of Europe and sending them with no due process to Syria or Egypt to be tortured, or spying on American citizens without the warrants required by law. These were all crimes. And when Barack Obama ran in 2008, he was often asked whether he believed that those crimes should be prosecuted. He always gave the same answer, which is “Absolutely. Nobody's above the law and one of the first things I'm going to do when I win is direct my attorney general to investigate whether crimes were committed there and whether or not there should be prosecutions.” And yet, the minute he got into office, the media started haranguing him, that you don't go and prosecute your political adversaries in the United States, you don't go and prosecute prior administrations. This is only done in banana republics, not in the United States. 

My argument always was: well, what if they actually did commit crimes? What if the prior administration actually committed crimes? What if your political adversaries committed crimes? Are they supposed to be exempt from the same rule of law that applies to all other citizens? If this were a case where the consensus that has long existed in Washington by the media and politicians – that you don't go and prosecute your political adversaries or the prior administration – if that were being really lifted permanently because journalism and politics realized that were wrong, I'd be the first to applaud. That's not what's happening here.

Another issue that I've long talked about is how journalism is corrupt when it does nothing more than, say, “The Republicans say this, the Democrats say this, and it's not up for us to decide. We're just going to report what officials say in the U.S. government. We're not going to tell you if it's true or false.” And so, when the media started after Trump saying, “oh, we're going to start calling him a liar all the time,” I would also be cheering if it really meant an abandonment of that kind of lazy journalism, that kind of corrupting journalism where you don't investigate what powerful people claim, you just report it and mimic it and then leave it at that. But again, this practice is only for Trump. You will never hear of them saying those kinds of things about Joe Biden or Democratic Party officials or anyone else. So, this isn't a form of progress or evolution in how we understand things. This is obviously the political persecution and the judicial and legal persecution of Trump and his closest allies, not in the name of equal justice for all, but solely in the name of weaponizing the judicial system against a political movement that they regard with great fear that they will do anything to stop, including abusing the legal system.

From The Wall Street Journal earlier today on the Steve Bannon case:

 

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A federal judge Thursday ordered Steve Bannon to surrender by July 1 to serve a four-month prison sentence for defying the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack and former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

In a unanimous decision last month, a three-judge appeals court panel rejected Bannon’s arguments that his conviction wasn’t valid because he was following his lawyer’s advice when he refused to comply with a House subpoena demanding documents and testimony. The panel said Bannon’s advice-of-counsel defense wasn’t valid in contempt-of-Congress cases and would impede the legislature’s investigative authority.

Bannon was the first of two former Trump White House officials to face prosecution for defying the House panel. A year after Bannon’s conviction, former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro was found guilty of defying the committee and later sentenced to four months in prison. Both cases stemmed from House referrals recommending that the Justice Department bring prosecutions. (The Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2024)

 

Someone who hasn't looked at these issues for very long might say, well, if Congress issues a subpoena, you're legally required to obey it. If you don't obey it, or you don't give the documents that they asked for and the testimony that they demand, truthfully, you will be held in contempt of Congress, and that is a crime. The problem is that there is a long history of the executive branch refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas on the grounds that they have the power as the executive branch - which is supposed to be separate from the legislative power - that they have, rights as the executive branch not to turn over information or appear to testify when a co-equal branch, which is Congress, demands their appearance. Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro are by far not the first people who were in the executive branch to give a middle finger to Congress when they've issued a subpoena and yet you'd be hard-pressed to find another case where people explicitly were held in contempt of congressional subpoenas, but who were referred to the Justice Department and/or then prosecuted by the Justice Department for it. 

Here, this is a case where the Biden Justice Department took a referral from a Democratic-run committee, the January 6 committee that was created under Nancy Pelosi's speakership, a committee where for the first time in the history of our country, the House speaker rejected the members that the minority, the Republicans, wanted to put on that committee, the first time in history that a House speaker refused to impanel the members of Congress indicated as members of that committee by the House minority leader and instead, as a result, no Republicans agreed to serve on that committee in protest, except for two Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who obviously are far more aligned with the Democratic Party when it comes to January 6. So, in effect, it was a full partisan panel and so the Democrats in Congress referred these contempt citations to the Biden Justice Department, which in turn decided to prosecute – something almost unprecedented in our history. 

Let me give you a few similar cases to understand what a complete deviation this is from how things have typically been done in Washington. Here, from CNN, in February 2008, during the Bush administration. 


U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey Friday said he will not ask a federal grand jury to investigate whether two top Bush administration officials should be prosecuted for contempt of Congress.

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Thursday asked Mukasey to look into whether White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers committed contempt of Congress in the investigation of the 2006 firings of several U.S. attorneys.

Earlier this month, the House voted to find Bolten and Miers in contempt of Congress and pursue charges against them.

The White House argues that forcing the aides to testify would violate the Constitution's separation of powers. (CNN, February 29, 2008)

 

And that has been the longstanding view in Washington, that if Congress orders a private citizen to appear for a legitimate investigation, there are all kinds of limits on what Congress is permitted to investigate. And I think it's extremely questionable whether or not they had the authority to investigate private citizens for January 6, because in general, the only two types of investigations that Congress is permitted to initiate are one, to exercise oversight over the executive branch, and number two, to hold hearings to decide what legislation they want to pass. So, if they're, for example, thinking about legislation related to a certain industry, you call the people in that industry, you call the activists against that industry, and you hear from all the sides, and then you decide what kind of legislation is appropriate. That's one example of when Congress can convene investigative hearings. The other is solely to investigate executive branch officials, it's never to investigate private citizens. And yet, that's exactly what the January 6 committee here did. Those precedents saying that Congress can investigate private citizens for their political views came out of the McCarthy hearings when the Supreme Court – twice – in the 1950s, told Congress that they were vastly exceeding the scope of their investigative powers by trying to investigate and harass people for their political views. And that's exactly what the January 6 Committee did. But even leaving all that partisanship and all that precedent aside, there have been so many other cases where Congress declared a certain executive official to be in contempt of Congress, and it never went to the point where Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro's cases have gone.

 

Here from CBS News, in June 2012, another example:

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One day after the House voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to provide documents relating to the Fast and Furious gunwalking program […] 

 

The White House says Eric Holder, the Obama attorney general, won't be prosecuted for contempt. Many of you may not even remember what that was, but it was a scandal involving the Justice Department whether they were permitting all kinds of serious weapons to come in through the Mexican border through illegal immigration. And the Congress was investigating that Eric Holder refused to turn over documents the House held him in contempt.

White House spokesperson Jay Carney said the criminal prosecution of the contempt charges will not move forward. He said the president's assertion of executive privilege over the related documents makes the matter moot.

In a letter sent to the House Speaker John Boehner, Deputy Attorney General James Cole confirmed that Justice would not move forward with contempt prosecution. (CBS News, June 29, 2012)

 

I'll take you all the way back to 1983, during the first term of the Reagan administration, where you can see just how long standing this  tradition is that has not resulted in these kinds of prosecutions. From The New York Times, March 1983. 



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There you see the headline, the attorney general that was Ronald Reagan's attorney general, William French Smith, defends action by the Justice Department in the contempt case.

 

Under sharp questioning today by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General William French Smith repeatedly maintained that there was no way to prevent conflicts between the executive and legislative branches like the battle over access to Environmental Protection Agency documents.

 

So Congress was trying to get documents to investigate what the Reagan administration was doing with the Environmental Protection Agency, and EPA officials and others refused to hand them over, claiming that that was the executive prerogative to formulate policy, and Congress had no right to intrude. When William Smith went before Congress and they grilled him on why he wasn't prosecuting them and why the Justice Department was, he said,

 

There is ''built-in conflict'' and tension between the branches, Mr. Smith asserted, adding, ''As long as we have this system of government, I don't see how we can avoid the kind of problem we've had here.''

 

…several committee members, expressing dissatisfaction with Mr. Smith's responses, demanded a guarantee that the House would not be ignored the next time it cited an official in the executive branch for contempt and sought to have the case prosecuted.

 

The dispute involves the Justice Department's action in the contempt case against the head of the environmental agency, Anne McGill Burford, who was cited for refusing to turn over subpoenaed documents. 

 

These are all causing very ancient memories to return from an old political scandal. But this really was the same conflict between the EPA and Congress. The EPA director, Anne Burford, was highly controversial. She was extremely conservative and put in charge of the EPA, was a very pro-industry anti-environmentalist. The House wanted to investigate her and she refused to turn over documents and the Reagan Justice Department refused to prosecute her for it.

 

Representative Peter W. Rodino Jr., the New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the committee, told Mr. Smith that by law, the United States Attorney had a ''mandatory'' duty to present the contempt case to a grand jury. But he suggested that the department seemed to believe it was free to make its own decision on whether to prosecute. (The New York Times, March 16, 1983)

 

So, just look at how many cases involving Republican and Democratic administrations, where members of the executive branch or people close to the president, refused to turn over information demanded by subpoena to congressional committees who were trying to investigate the executive branch. Typically, because of this notion that the two branches are co-equal, one is not in charge of the other, Nancy Pelosi can't pick up the phone and order Donald Trump to appear before Congress or order his White House chief of staff to appear before Congress. That would make the Congress supreme and not a co-equal branch. And that's why those two branches of government are constantly fighting with one another over when they have to turn over documents. It's an inherent and natural part of our system that has often been resolved politically, but rarely with prosecutions, even when, as in the case of Eric Holder and other instances, Congress declared that official in contempt of Congress, and referred the contempt charges to the Justice Department. 

There's just no denying that these are long-standing precedents in Washington, for better or for worse. Again, I'm against a lot of them, I'd be the first one to party if they were really undone but that's not what's happening here. This is a one-time-only suspension of these long-standing rules, not an abandonment of them, in the name of criminalizing the Trump movement and doing everything to sabotage Donald Trump's attempt to return to office. 

As I suggested at the start, this ethos in Washington was a major part of my journalism for the first ten years. It was a topic on which I focused incessantly, and that was because I had started writing about the War on Terror, and I began to see that a lot of what was being done by the Bush and Cheney administration and the neocons who ran the relevant agencies was not just misguided or dangerous or destructive but was illegal, criminal. That definitely included the way the Bush administration was spying on American citizens without the warrants required by law, something that Congress retroactively legalized in 2008 and that became the FISA  law that now gets renewed all the time and that just got recently renewed to allow spying on American citizens with no warrants but, at the time, it was illegal and criminal. The same is true for torturing detainees, which had always been a crime in the United States, kidnapping with no due process and other similar ones as well. And so every time I was arguing that these were crimes and that they should be prosecuted, what I always heard from longtime journalists and media and the consensus in Washington was that, well, it doesn't really matter if those acts are illegal or not, because here in Washington, we don't prosecute top-level political officials for the acts they've undertaken as part of their executive branch duties. That only happens in Banana Republics. That's called criminalizing policy differences or criminalizing legal disputes between the two branches and you just don't do that, otherwise, you can have a never-ending cycle of retribution where one party is putting the other in prison the minute it gets hold of the levers of the Justice Department. 

One of the first debates I ever had with a classic member of the corporate media was when NBC News’s Chuck Todd, went on the air and basically scoffed at the idea – and this is in 2009, the first year of the Obama administration – that there should be any investigations at all, criminal investigations, of Bush officials or what Bush officials did in the past, CIA officials did, or the NSA did, because this is a distraction, he said. It doesn't really matter. It's not the stuff that Obama should be doing. He should be caring about appearing as a centrist, those sorts of things. In Washington, we just simply don't prosecute prior administrations, and I can't tell you how many columns like that were written, how many TV pundits went on cable news and said that it was the overwhelming consensus. I can't think of anyone in corporate media who believed that President Obama should investigate or prosecute prior acts in the Bush administration. In fact, so intense was the media pressure on Obama, that despite promising repeatedly in the 2008 campaign that he would give it to his attorney general with the instructions to look into it, to criminally investigate it, and to prosecute if there were reasonable grounds for believing crimes were committed, saying, I'm not going to be involved, this is a legal question, nobody's above the law, I'll ask my attorney general to look at it. Two months into office, Obama announced that he was not going to allow any prosecutions of anyone in the prior administration, including in the CIA, for any of these crimes. Pronouncing “It's more important that we look forward than backward,” which never made any sense on its own terms, because all criminal prosecutions, by definition, require looking backward. By definition, their acts were undertaken in the past. When it comes to the prior administration, we're going to adopt the view that we don't look backward, we only look forward for the good of the country or whatever, then it is a complete immunity or exemption for politicians from being prosecuted by the law in the same way that ordinary American citizens are prosecuted. And I was indignant about this. I wrote article after article. I wrote, as I said, the 2011 book arguing against this mindset. 

In 2009, I had a big enough platform that I really couldn't be ignored any longer by people in the corporate media, and so I wrote an article about Chuck Todd's comments and heavily criticized him, and he said, hey, I wish you had talked to me before. And I said, well, I don't think I have the obligation. I'm just criticizing your public remarks. But I'd love to engage you on this. And why don't you come on and we'll do a podcast, and I can ask you questions and you can ask me questions and we'll debate this issue. 

 

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And here you see The Huffington Post, in August 2009, reporting on that debate. I'm just going to give you one passage from this discussion that I had with him to illustrate to you how adamant these people were that we cannot have prosecutions of our political adversaries or our past administrations. 

 

GG: Let me ask you about that, then. If a president can find, as a president always will be able to find, some low-level functionary in the Justice Department -- a John Yoo -- to write a memo authorizing whatever it is the president wants to do, and to say that it's legal, then you think the president ought to be immune from prosecution whenever he breaks the law, as long as he has a permission slip from the Justice Department? I mean, that's the argument that's being made. Don't you think that's extremely dangerous?

 

CT: That could be dangerous, but let me tell you this: Is it healthy for our reputation around the world - and this I think is that we have TO do what other countries do more often than not, so-called democracies that struggle with their democracy, and sit there and always PUT the previous administration on trial - you don't think that we start having retributions on this going forward?

 

Look, I am no way excusing torture. I'm not excusing torture, and I bristle at the attack when it comes on this specific issue. But I think the political reality in this, and, I understand where you're coming from, you're just saying, just because something's politically tough doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. That's, I don't disagree with you from 30,000 feet. And that is an idealistic view of this thing. Then you have the realistic view of how this town works, and what would happen, and is it good for our reputation around the world if we're essentially putting on trial the previous administration? We would look at another country doing that, and say, geez, boy, this is — (The Huffington Post, August 17, 2009)

 

And the reason I was so interested in having this conversation with Chuck Todd is not because he was some aberrational voice in the U.S. media. Just look at this ethos here: “the hardcore reality,” “if you know how Washington works” as you go around prosecuting your political opponents, people in the other party, people from the prior administration,” this is what they had been saying for decades – for decades. It's how they excuse the pardon of Richard Nixon by Gerald Ford, even though the evidence was overwhelming that you could have convicted Richard Nixon of crimes the way you did with many of his top aides, all of whom got pardoned. During the Reagan administration, there was an Iran-Contra scandal that involved highly likely criminality on the part of Reagan officials who wanted to fund the Contras in a civil war in Nicaragua, even though Congress had passed a law saying any funding of the Contras in Nicaragua is illegal and hereby banned. The executive branch ignored that law, but they couldn't get funds from Congress. So, what they did was they sold highly sophisticated missiles and other weapons to Iran, got the cash at the White House in secret accounts, and then sent that money secretly to fund the Contras, even though Congress had said, you can't. A lot of the top officials in the Reagan administration were at risk of being prosecuted, including George Bush, the then-vice president. And the minute George Bush got elected, the first thing he did was issue a pardon of Caspar Weinberger and every other Reagan administration official, and most people in the media applauded that and said, “Yeah, we can't be distracted by these kinds of prosecutions.” 

We can't be prosecuting people in Washington. It's too much of a distraction. It makes us seem like a banana republic. This has been the argument for so long. And if I really believed that this was finally being lifted, and the idea was, look, we're going to prosecute people, no matter how powerful they are in Washington, any time they break the law, I would be the happiest person. I'd be the first one to stand up and cheer. But it's so obvious that's not what's happening. There's no remorse or regret about how this was done previously. The minute Trump is out of the scene, they're going to return right again to this rule. It's a one-time exception only, as so many things are, for abusing and weaponizing the justice system against one person and one person only, and that is Donald Trump. 

 




Nicole Shanahan is in many respects a classic American success story. She grew up in poverty, worked her way through college and Law School, including by working in various, hourly jobs like a maid and a paralegal, and is now a 38-year-old highly respected lawyer in Silicon Valley. She's also one of the richest women in the world, with an estimated net worth of $1 billion that is largely, though not entirely, a result of her marriage to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. But most notable, she is now the running mate of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. If polls are even remotely correct, they will likely be the most significant independent presidential candidacy in many years. 

Many things made Shanahan's choice as vice presidential candidate somewhat notable, including the fact that she had never held political office previously. But that is also true of the man who leads the ticket, RFK, Jr. and was also true of someone named Donald Trump before his 2016 victory. Whatever else is true, she's an extremely interesting person with a very rich and I would say vintage American life. And she also has a robust political trajectory, and we are delighted to welcome her tonight to System Update. 


G. Greenwald: It's great to see you. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us. 

 

Nicole Shanahan: Thanks for having me, Glenn. And just a quick correction: my mom was a maid. But my first job was busing tables, and I just wanted to. 

 

G. Greenwald: I apologize for that, but that story is true, that you did grow up without any advantages, essentially in poverty, had to work your way through college and Law School and built up what you became, which I think everybody can and should respect. Let me start by asking you about just a couple of, I think, crucial issues, including the two wars that our country is currently financing, arming and supporting. The first one is in Ukraine. When I had RFK, Jr. on my show several months ago, we spent a lot of time talking about his view on that war. And since then, the war has gotten even worse, from the perspective of the Ukrainians. I think it's a consensus that the Ukrainian military is in deep trouble, that the Russians are advancing, and that the idea that they could ever expel Russian troops from all of Ukraine is a pipe dream that will never happen. Do you support the ongoing financing by the U.S. government of the war in Ukraine? And if not, what do you think should be done to try and bring about a resolution? 

 

Nicole Shanahan: Well, first of all, this war should have never happened. The United States should have never egged it on as it has. The U.S. has been involved in Ukrainian affairs for decades now. We've been involved in their elections and have been pushing certain kinds of candidates that have been anti-Russia and against normalization of trade and other relationships with Russia. And so the moment that we're in right now, watching Ukrainian lives lost at incredible rates, young men getting dragged into duty who have no interest in fighting and risking their lives, you have the will of the people wanting peace with Russia in this moment. I was devastated when the foreign aid bill went out. Sending an additional, I believe it was $70 billion, to finance this war. At this moment, I think that it is imperative for the United States to understand what is going on. The United States has intentionally aggravated a situation and has continued to escalate it. It is looking at deploying troops. It has allowed the Ukrainian military to use U.S., military supplies. I mean, every day there's a new escalation. That is taking us to a point of a World War III scale risk for our people. And we need to think about what our job is right now. And our job is to take care of this country and not escalate foreign wars. 

 

G. Greenwald: Concerning that last argument that our job as a country, or the government's duty – it seems so basic, but for whatever reason, it has to be debated because so often it's not done – the U.S. government's primary duty is, as you said, to take care of our citizens here at home. Our citizens are suffering. Communities are being ravaged by all kinds of pathologies. People are in economic difficulty. And so, as you say, why should we be sending $60 billion to Ukraine to fuel a highly futile war? I want to know whether you apply that same line of thinking to the billions and billions of dollars that we're sending to Israel to finance and arm its war against Gaza, one that has resulted in more civilian casualties by a long distance than the one in Ukraine. 

 

Nicole Shanahan: I think that the U.S. sending funds to Israel to support the Iron Dome makes a lot of sense. I've supported that in the past. I think, historically, it's been a great way to show support for the state of Israel. I believe October 7 was one of the worst terrorist attacks I've witnessed in my lifetime and might be the worst terrorist attack I will witness in my lifetime. And I do think a response was warranted. I think that when I think about Israel participating in wars of the past and the role that the United States played, you know, I often think of leadership like Golda Meir, who ended the Yom Kippur War, in about a month, and she was fighting on multiple fronts, against multiple armies. And what I see right now happening on the ground in Gaza is devastating. I think there are arguments to be made that we've long past the point of a cease-fire. I think there are lots of arguments to be made that Israel should be showing more restraint. You know, Bobby and I, this is one of the areas that we have the most heated debate. And I think that there's an argument that the United States should have delivered the last aid package to Israel with greater affirmation as to how that money would be spent. We're in a moment right now that I really don't think we should have been in. And you have to go back historically to really look at the United States' involvement in the Middle East. There's a direct line between our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and Hamas. Israel thinks that - and many others do as well - that a two-state system is not possible in a world in which Hamas is running Gaza. And I tend to agree with that. But is it possible or likely that the Israeli military is going to be successful in destroying Hamas in totality, at this moment? I don't think so. And I think that was actually clear as early as February. And so I think that at this moment, the United States really needs to take responsibility for what it's done to arrive at this moment. And I do think that there needs to be greater coordination, greater levels of sophistication in how we're operating ourselves in the Middle East at this moment. 

 

G. Greenwald: So when you began, you started talking about funding the Iron Dome, which is a purely defensive system that prevents Israel from being attacked with rockets and other types of missiles, but we're not just funding that. We're, of course, funding all their offensive weapons. Most of the bombs being dropped on civilians in Gaza have been made in the USA and the whole world knows that. I guess what I'm wondering is if the advocates of U.S. financing of the war in Ukraine will say: “we're not helping Ukraine conquer territory and we're not helping Ukraine invade other countries either. It's basically like an iron dome. We're just giving them money to defend their country against aggression and invasion by the Russians.” What is the difference between Ukraine on the one hand and Israel on the other, in your view, when it comes to the question of whether we should be financing their wars? 

 

Nicole Shanahan: I think the primary difference is what is being asked for in these conflicts. So, if you look at Russia's history with Ukraine, what is being asked for is the normalization of the trade relationship between Ukrainian leadership and Russia. And tons of historical records show that Russia has been attempting to create a trade route and access point to the Black Sea. And there's a reasonableness there that I think that most people can objectively say this war could have been avoided. I think when you look at what's been going on in Israel and Gaza and you talk to Israelis, they've been fired at, by Hamas, for so many years, and you talk to the average Israeli who's in their 40s, and they've been now drafted into so many different wars. And October 7 is very different - and I'm just speaking morally. October 7 had a very different effect on the consciousness of humanity and I think that certainly, most people would agree that a response was necessary based on the October 7 attack. There was reprehensible behavior. But I think where the majority of people are in their consciousness at this moment as well is very much wishing for greater restraint from Israel, which has an incredibly sophisticated army compared to Hamas. And I think that given the complexity of the region - and, again, the U.S. has contributed a lot to exacerbating this complexity - there are fundamental differences between these two wars. But that being said, neither one needs to continue, as it has been currently, and there are paths to de-escalation available that this administration is fully and capable of executing right now. 

 

G. Greenwald: Let me just switch gears a little bit, when your selection as vice presidential candidate was announced, there was a lot of discourse suggesting or claiming that one of the reasons, if not the main reason for your selection was that you have a great ability to self-finance an independent campaign. I'm somebody who has long said that the way in which the two parties have constructed this kind of duopoly means that the only way you can succeed as an independent candidate is if you have something like a billionaire on the ticket who can fund the campaign. Nonetheless, I just want to understand, was that part of the conversation as part of the selection process, whether or not you were willing to donate money? How much money do you intend to donate to this campaign?

 

Nicole Shanahan: I can't give you an exact dollar amount. We're in June right now. June, historically for independent candidates, has been very challenging. That's usually when the other two parties really ramp up their PR and media spend and most of that media spend typically goes towards taking out the independent candidate first and then, you know, their opposing party candidate. And I am of the belief that this is an election unlike any other. We have a standing president running for reelection who is clearly showing signs of rapid decline. We have another president who has just recently been convicted of a felony. And we've got now an independent candidate who was the only outspoken public figure during a pandemic that was calling out the origins of a virus and calling out government officials and it’s clear that he was entirely correct. So, my involvement and I feel like my responsibility right now, being on this ticket is to first and foremost make sure he's on every single ballot. And I will contribute as much as it takes to make that a reality. 

 

G. Greenwald: I totally respect that and I understand that argument. And like I said, I'm somebody who in the past has said if you want to be an independent candidate, if you want to challenge the two parties, you know, unfortunately, the only way to do that is if you have somebody in the one or the other slots who basically is a billionaire and can self-finance the campaign to compete with the two parties because that's how they've constructed the system. I'm just wondering, though, when people look at your selection and our political system in general, which you have no role in creating, but the idea that very wealthy people obviously have a much bigger say than ordinary Americans in exerting power in Washington and how laws are passed. You've been a big donor for political candidates for quite some time, do you regard the role of big money in politics as a major problem for democracy, and if so, what kind of reforms would you support? 

 

Nicole Shanahan: I think it's a huge problem. I think Citizens United turned this country into a kleptocracy overnight. And I believe that individual donors should certainly have limits and that independents should be free to run without having to spend this kind of money. The ballot requirements that we've seen are arbitrary and ludicrous. Each state is different. Their requirements are crushing. We have an enormous legal team just to deal with that piece. The thing that has made me really excited is that I recently met with somebody at an organization called American Promise and they are going state by state to try to pass a constitutional amendment that would set contribution limits for both individuals and corporations. Twenty-two states have endorsed it, and it seems to be something that Americans want, by a large margin of the population. The grand majority of Americans want there to be limits, and I am one of them. 

 

G. Greenwald: You referenced earlier the recent conviction in the Manhattan courtroom of former president Donald Trump. Today, before speaking to you, I was talking about the order compelling Steve Bannon, the president's former top White House official, to surrender to federal prison on July 1 for contempt of Congress charges, a charge for which people are very rarely imprisoned. Do you see the prosecution of Trump on these specific charges, the one about the accounting irregularities for hush fund payments, and the other prosecutions of so many people around the Trump orbit as a vindication of the rule of law? Or do you think it's an example of Democrats and others in the establishment weaponizing the justice system to attack their political enemies? 

 

Nicole Shanahan: There's been evidence from both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party using the judicial system and the Department of Justice against political opponents. We have become so divided and polarized in this country that there is no branch of government that hasn't somehow been corrupted by these party lines. I think that they've both been guilty. You can point at many areas where Republicans have done similar things and Democrats have done similar. I mean, no greater example is what happened to President Trump. But the case itself, if you are just objectively looking at how the case was conducted, is a hush money trial that didn't have the correct jury instructions in the hands of the jury. And there were just so many things about it that make you really question the objectivity of the Justice Department at this moment. The Justice Department has always been the last resort. It's been that last layer of defense in protecting our civil liberties in this country, normalcy in this country, objectivity, and the rule of law. To have it be toyed with in this way, to have it be manipulated and distorted, I think is the number one thing. It's kind of the last straw for many people in this country; they feel that we've slipped into an autocratic environment where the rule of law is really no longer the rule of law but the rule of the parties. It's incredibly concerning on so many levels. And I think it has a ripple effect as well. 

 

G. Greenwald: So, I referenced earlier the history that you've had as a big dollar donor in politics, from what I can tell, maybe I'm wrong, but the overwhelming majority of your big dollar donations, if not all of them, have gone to Democratic Party candidates, including both kinds of mainstream centrist types like Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign, Pete Buttigieg, his presidential campaign, but also […]

 

Nicole Shanahan: And Marianne Williamson. In 2020.

 

G. Greenwald: I was about to say Marianne Williamson. You supported her, as well as some of the reform-minded prosecutors, including in San Francisco, which is a criminal justice reform cause often associated with the left - although Donald Trump was the first president to sign a criminal justice reform in a long time. Nonetheless, you were donating to classic Democrats. You were a registered member of the Democratic Party until this year when you were going to run as an independent. You alluded earlier to President Biden's obvious rapid decline in cognitive function and ability. But is that all that concerns you about Biden and the Democrats, or is there anything else or other things that have caused you to change your mind about the Democratic Party? 

 

Nicole Shanahan: To be completely honest with you, Biden's health is secondary to – and secondary by a long margin – the enormous corruption I've seen in the party. So, in 2020, I didn't support Biden. I supported Hillary but not with enthusiasm. But it was in 2020 that I realized that the Democratic primary had been completely broken. I knew that Bernie was likely to win the primary in 2016. In fact, I think he won. That was the first real big crack in the DNC that I saw. In 2020, it was truly, very obvious that there was no more Democratic primary. No one could run a fair shot at beating the central democratic dynastic line. And it was very clear that Biden was the only one who was going to get a shot at getting on the ticket. My experience, I mean, this would take hours and hours to unpack, but I've had such excruciatingly disappointing experiences with the leadership of the Democrats. I've heard things said to me and I've seen things done that are incredibly contradictory. They're really pathetic in terms of what the party cares about and prioritizes. There's been almost no interest in addressing the root causes of many of this country's biggest issues, including chronic disease and including budget adjustments that need to be made. They throw around money. They want to win at all costs. Once they win, they're not focused on the American people. They are focused on these auxiliary functions of government. And it's very clear that they have built up this enormous kleptocracy in our agencies. There was no way for me to be able to continue, to take any of it seriously. I couldn't support it anymore. And, you know, you said I've previously supported many progressive DAs. I've also recalled DAs as well that didn't do their jobs. The first I DA supported was actually a former police chief. And he did a pretty good job in San Francisco […]

 

G. Greenwald: That was George Gascón, right? 

 

Nicole Shanahan: George Gascón. Yes. A very much liked police officer. He ran on bringing balance to the system and communication and partnership between the DA's office and the police department. But he also wanted to create trust and make sure that there was no bias that could be called into question, and he wanted to make sure that the police department had a lot of integrity and trust. 

 

G. Greenwald: Yeah, I did think the donation to Marianne Williamson was interesting, in part because her major critique is aimed at least as much at the Democratic Party, as the Republican Party. She often sounds like more of an independent candidate criticizing both parties. A lot of times when people who become very disappointed in the Democratic Party come to see them as pathetic as you said – I empathize a lot with that trajectory – a lot of those people still in the back of their mind, believe that at the end of the day, Democrats are still a little bit better than the Republicans. In this case, I guess, especially under Donald Trump. Is that a view that you share - that if there were no independent candidate, if there were only Democrats or Republicans, that people should vote for the Democratic Party? Are you not prepared to say that one is better than the other at this point? 

 

Nicole Shanahan: I think that there is a clear uniparty and nothing made that more obvious than the way Congress came together in this last session. There is no way that I could swing over and support Donald Trump. I know too much about his record. He had a Raytheon lobbyist running the secretary of defense. He had his loyalists, which represented all kinds of corporate interests, fill his cabinet. He hasn't blinked twice about the fact that he was responsible for Operation Warp Speed had enabled Fauci very blindly to go ahead and conduct the pandemic response. He intentionally pulled the investigation on Pfizer. He's done so many things that, you know, that are just as pitiful as the Democratic Party has done. You know, I like Liberty Republicans. I think that if there's some future where the two-party system returns to any sense of sanity, I could see myself becoming a Liberty Republican alongside individuals like, you know, I think Thomas Massie has done great things for this country. I think that Ron Paul's done incredible things for this country. I think Rand Paul has been really fighting the good fight for this country. And then I also see some good progressives, you know, I think Dean Phillips, has done some very good and interesting things as well. So there are still signs that the two parties can be salvaged. I don't know that we will get there, though, if we just keep doing these huge swings. And, you know, my theory right now is that Trump is peaking, in large part, due to the help of the Democrats and the general understanding in America that the judicial system has been corrupted to support Democrats in this election by prosecuting Trump. But that backfired on them. He's raised over $100 million since the conviction. 

 

G. Greenwald: I just have a couple of more questions in the little bit of time that we have left. I want to respect your time. So, I have a lot of questions for you to come back on, but, for now, I want to ask you about this: since 2016, when there was this sort of trauma to the system of the establishment, Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton, but also Brexit, there's been this kind of systematic attempt to gain control over the kind of information and speech that is permitted to flow on the Internet. There have been governments around the world, including our own government and our intelligence agencies, who have created excuses to either censor the Internet directly or to coerce Big Tech platforms to do it for them. Usually, the justifications are things like, well, we have to combat disinformation as if the government can decree truth and falsity, or we have to combat hate speech or things that are some kind of a threat to our national security. Where do you fall in that debate? Do you believe that there are any reasons that the government or Big Tech should be censoring political speech or on the Internet, other than in obvious cases where crimes are being committed, like fraud or things like that, but when it comes to political speech, do you support the censorship or suppression of any of those views? 

 

Nicole Shanahan: I mean, you can't love this country and also support the censorship. I love this country very deeply. I love this country because of the Constitution. I, in part, went to Law School because of the fact that I believe so deeply in the power of the Constitution to protect individual liberties. And I believe these basic liberties, such as freedom of speech, are what make this country, the country that it is, a country of hope, a country of honor, a country of innovation, a country of living out one's dream. The censorship that has occurred since 2016, especially with the use of AI to censor speech automatically, and these large language models, which are programmed specifically to demarcate categories of speech that will be automatically banned, has been one of the reasons why – I'm sitting here in Silicon Valley right now – I have decided to rebel against Silicon Valley. Part of me joining Bobby Kennedy's ticket is this rebellion. Bobby Kennedy has been censored more than any political candidate in my lifetime that I'm aware of. And I have joined this ticket in part because I am an insider. I know how this happened. I saw it happen. I know why it's happened, and I know exactly how to unwind it. And if given the opportunity, I will on my first opportunity, go into these agencies and take out and disable all of these AI censors. I will also understand the exact points of, you know, government capture of the corporations and the Big Tech platforms. They have, you know, it's not just use or coerce. It's a combination of coercion and knowing and willful partnership. And I've seen it. 

 

G. Greenwald: Yeah. That is interesting that you kind of come from it with that perspective. And so much of the censorship is done by AI. 

All right. Last question. When I had Bobby Kennedy on my show, he said that one of the things he would support almost immediately was pardoning both Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, both of whom have essentially been turned into dissidents for the crime of exposing the crimes of the secret part of our government, the U.S. Security State. Do you agree with that position? And more importantly, how do you see the dangers posed by that part of our government that has no democratic accountability, that works in complete secrecy, that's independent of any party change that we might vote for the CIA, the NSA? How do you see that part of the government? 

 

Nicole Shanahan: Ron Paul said in his libertarian convention speech that there was a coup when JFK was assassinated. And I don't think there's any candidate in history that is going to be able to unravel the shadow government more than Bobby Kennedy, Jr. can and will do. I am fully supportive of the need for that. I think that it is critical to reclaim this nation as a free and stable republic. Assange is a hero. And I think that what he has done through this broader cypherpunk movement is to protect the Internet, which is where most Americans, and especially young Americans, are living out their lives today. It is a forum of engagement, exchanging information, building companies and building coalitions. And if the Internet is not a free place, for people to be able to expose and have conversations about what is going on with their governments, then we've lost the most dominant speech we have, which is, you know, the speech that we have over digital platforms. So, I believe Assange is 100% a hero and it is so necessary. Trump had a chance to do it and he didn't. And I don't understand why he didn’t, because, to me, one of the most obvious and easy decisions he could have made was to pardon Assange. Snowden is a whistleblower. We are a country that has historically protected overseas whistleblowers. Why do we prosecute our own? It's incredibly hypocritical. 

 

G. Greenwald: Well, Miss Shanahan, you gave us a lot of your time. I found the conversation very interesting. We'd love to have you back on, at some point in the future. And I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to us tonight. 

 

Nicole Shanahan: Thanks for having me. It was nice to meet you as well. 

 

G. Greenwald: You too. Have a good evening. 

 

So that concludes our show for this evening. 

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Christopher Rufo: On Civil Liberties, the American Founding, Academic Freedom, and More
System Update #450

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

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Tonight: Regardless of what you think of him or really about any issue, there's no denying the profound influence that tonight's guest, Christopher Rufo, has had on conservative politics and state and federal policy more broadly, though he has often focused on educational debates and educational institutions – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for example, appointed him to a key position to transform that state's New School from an institution largely producing left-wing thought to one that is more aligned with conservative educational dogma and policy. He was also instrumental in publicizing the plagiarism of Harvard President Claudine Gay, which, along with issues regarding campus Israel protests and antisemitism, led to her firing after only six months in that position. He has become one of the most influential voices shaping the views of leading conservative politicians and media figures. 

Rufo appeared on our program once before: back in 2023, where we spent an hour exploring his core beliefs and goals, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not. The conversation was spirited but unfailingly civil, and I think, illuminating of some of the controversies surrounding his work. 

What promoted Rufo's appearance tonight were comments that I had made about him and other right-wing figures in an interview I gave about the Trump administration to Reason Magazine. Rufo saw those comments, noted them and objected to them on X. It led to a back and forth but it became rapidly apparent - at least to me - that social media was the absolute worst venue to try to sort through those issues we were discussing, some of which have a lot of complexity and nuance to them: things like the core values of the American Founding, the values and views that most influenced the founders and how all of those questions apply to our current political debates, especially over civil liberties and the freedom of academic institutions. 

So, I suggested that we remove the conversation to a platform more suitable for a constructive exchange and he quickly agreed to come on this program for us to do so. 

His official biography does not really capture Rufo's influence and accomplishments, but for those unfamiliar with it, he is a senior fellow and director of the Initiative on Critical Race Theory at the Manhattan Institute. He is also a contributing editor of City Journal, where his writings explore a range of issues, including critical race theory, gender ideology, homelessness, addiction, crime, and the decline of American cities. He has been published in Fox and the New York Post and has been the subject of numerous corporate media profiles, the most recent of which is a lengthy interview he gave to the New York Times just last month. He's the author of the New York Times bestselling book, “America's Cultural Revolution,” and as a filmmaker, he has directed four documentaries for PBS, Netflix, and international television, including America Lost, which tells the story of three forgotten American cities. 

The issues we hope to discuss are, in my view, some of the most consequential for American politics and the West more broadly, and I'm very much looking forward to our exploration of our agreements and our disagreements on all of those questions. 


G. Greenwald: Chris, good evening, it's great to see you. Thanks so much for coming on and agreeing to do this.

So, it's interesting, when I was thinking about how to do this, how to conduct our discussion, the issues that we discussed, even though it was just a few tweets, were so far reaching and kind of complex that I had so many things I wanted to talk to you about, so the hard part was figuring out what to kind of focus on. 

There was a series of tweets that you posted in response to that interview I had given in Reason, where I basically said, and it was part of a larger conversation, I was asked specifically about you, that I think you're very shrewd and influential and successful operative and journalist but, to me, it seems like you've gotten to the point where you care more about this kind of Machiavellian quest for power than you do about principles. 

And in response, you said this:

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NIH Ends Fauci's Brutal Dog Experiments; MTG and Massie Shut Down Law to Criminalize Israel Boycotts
System Update #449

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

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Former senior health official who lurked around Washington for 40 years, Anthony Fauci was, well before COVID, highly polarizing and, in many cases, widely disliked. When many of the truths of COVID and his behavior during that pandemic were revealed, he was jettisoned into an entirely new category of the hero/villain narrative that plagues so much of our politics. 

But one constant in his long career was that he was always a robust advocate for and a funder of – an ample funder of – some of the most grotesque, cruelest and pointless medical experimentations on animals in government labs paid for by the government, especially dogs. And when doing these experiments on dogs which have almost no medical value, they often chose on purpose for beagles as their breed of choice because as anyone who has spent any time with beagles will tell you, they have a particularly loving, docile and trustworthy instinct when they are with animals, which makes it very easy to deceive them. 

Justin Goodman is the Senior Vice President of Advocacy and Public Policy at White Coat Waste, is our guest to talk about the major win animal advocacy groups led by the very bipartisan White Coat Lab group scored today. The National Institute of Health, now run by Jay Bhattacharya, under the direction of HHS Secretary RFK Jr., announced that they were eliminating the last government-funded lab experiments on beagles: that was the lab that conducted the so-called barbaric septic shock experiment, and I'll save you the description until later. 

Then, Reason's magazine Matthew Petti wrote an excellent article today, a really good piece of journalism that broke down and analyzed the statute in very clear detail and concluded that it "would arguably be the most draconian measure of this kind to date". He is our second guest tonight. 

Some laws are so extreme and shocking that you can't actually believe anyone in Congress actually proposed them, and for me, this is one. As is true for most of the pro-Israel measures in Washington, it had a long list of co-sponsors from both parties. 

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Justin Goodman is the Senior Vice President of Advocacy and Public Policy at White Coat Waste Project, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that just got done heralding, explaining and it exposed and has held Dr. Fauci accountable for many things, including funding the Wuhan lab, as well as testing cruel, gratuitous, and pointless testing on dogs generally and beagles specifically. For more than two decades, Justin has led successful and award-winning grassroots and lobbying campaigns to end cruel taxpayer-funded experiments on dogs, cats, primates, and other animals. I've long been an admirer of that group and his work, and we're really delighted to have him join us tonight. 

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Glenn Takes Your Questions: Iraq War Lies, Judge Rebukes Trump, Ilham Omar Curses Reporters & More
System Update #448

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

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As most of you know, Friday night is our Q&A show. We take questions submitted throughout the week by members of our Locals community. This week, the questions cover a very wide range of issues including the bizarre story told by former Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont about how he was secretly accosted by shadowy members of the deep state while jogging in 2003, and they directed him to proof that the Bush administration was lying about the proposed war in Iraq. Leahy cast a meaningless vote against the war because of what he saw, but never let the public know about the proof he was shown. 

We also have questions about yesterday’s very significant ruling by another Trump-appointed federal judge who ruled against the Trump administration. This one concluded that the administration lacks the authority even to invoke the wartime Alien Enemies Act, which is what the administration has been using to justify removing people from the U.S. and sending them to an El Salvador prison without so much as a trial. 

Finally, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota uttered very naughty words to a journalist from the Daily Caller, who walked up to her on the street, began filming her, asking her adversarial questions – a perfectly legitimate journalistic activity. Upon seeing the video and Omar's reaction, many conservatives – including many who have spent a decade calling journalists The Enemy of the People and cheering right-wing politicians who have scored journalists often aggressively and with verbal abuse – have now decided that Omar had failed to show journalists the respect and deference that they deserve as journalists. 

We'll examine this and other questions as well, as much as we can, time permitting. 

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The first question comes from @thefarside:

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I totally agree with that point of view and I've seen this happen many times before when senators and Congress members access classified material and they're too scared to show it to the public, even though they could do so on the floor of the Senate or the House enjoying absolute complete immunity: they cannot be prosecuted, criminalized, or arrested for anything said on the floor of Congress. It's legislative immunity. They could just go and reveal it, but they almost never do. They leave it up to people like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, or other courageous whistleblowers to do it, even though they don't have immunity, while senators just conceal this information. 

So, here's what he wrote in his memoir, “The Road Taken” by Patrick Leahy. By the way, it's not a new memoir; it's from 2022, it was just a couple of years ago, but it just got resurfaced and started going viral on X. I think a lot of people didn't know about it. Who would sit down and read Patrick Leahy's book? I certainly didn't. 

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So, imagine you're just walking on the street with your wife. It's like an old couple walking in the street and out of nowhere, there are very fit joggers behind you. They are following you and they stop and say, “Hey, we hear you're bringing in briefings. How have those been going?” And you say, “Fine, but I can't talk about them.” They're like, “No, no worries. We don't want to talk about that. Just take a look at file 8. Have you seen that?”

He writes:

[…] It was obvious from the look on my face that I had not seen such a file. They suggested I should and that I might find it interesting. Quickly thereafter, I arranged to see File Eight, and it contradicted much of what I had heard from the Bush administration.

Days later, Marcelle and I were out walking again when the two joggers reappeared. After the opening greetings, they told me they understood I had seen File Eight and asked what did I think about it? It was the eeriest conversation I'd experienced in Washington. I felt like a senatorial version of Bob Woodward meeting Deep Throat—only in broad daylight.

I went through the usual disclaimers that I could not talk about any file and if such a file was available and so on. They said of course they understood, but they wondered if I had also been shown File Twelve, using a code word. […]

(The Road Taken, Patrick Leahy. 2022.)

 

They're like, “Hey, remember when we mentioned File Eight? We're glad you took a look at that. No, no, don't worry. We don't need to hear your opinion. We just want to know, you should look at file 12 too.” 

He says:

[…] Again, I think the look on my face gave them the answer. They apologized for interrupting our walk and jogged off.

The next day, I was back in the secure room in the Capitol to read File Twelve, and it again contradicted the statements that the administration, and especially Vice President Cheney, seemed to be relying on, and I told my staff and others that for a number of reasons I absolutely intended to vote against the war in Iraq.

(The Road Taken, Patrick Leahy. 2022.)

According to Patrick Leahy, he had been directed by mysterious deep state operatives, obviously, to classified files that had not been shown by the people briefing Congress on the Iraq War, both of which, he says, proved that the government was lying to the American people. 

You would think, I would think, that somebody in that position would be like, “Hey, I need to alert the American people to the fact that there are documents inside the government's file that prove that what Dick Cheney and George Bush were saying about the war in Iraq are lies.” 

Again, he had legal immunity; he could have read the whole file on the Senate floor and nothing would have happened. Even if he didn't have immunity, I would think you would be duty-bound when the government is selling a war to the population, a very serious invasion on the other side of the world, not a few bombs being dropped, and you have proof that what the government is saying is lying, but that's not what Patrick Leahy did and he admitted that in his book, not even realizing there's anything wrong with it. 

There's a woman on X who I find to be genuinely one of the smartest and most interesting X accounts to follow. Her X name is @villagecrazylady, but her name is Mel. She is very upfront. She does a podcast, a self-identified MAGA woman from the South. Yet, she believes the MAGA principle, she is vehemently opposed to all kinds of intervention, she's opposed to funding the war in Ukraine, funding Israel's war in Gaza, going to war with Iran, bombing Yemen, all the things that we were promised that Trump would do in foreign policy, she actually believes in it and insists on it and complains when it doesn't happen as it should. And she's just very smart. She's just always plugged into what I think are the right things, thinking about things that are really interesting, and I actually learned a lot from following her. I'm going to have her on the show soon. She was the one who alerted me to this. I think she was probably the one who alerted a lot of people to this, she said: 

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 I think what's really notable, too, is imagine that you're those two guys who obviously are risking their career, probably risking their liberty to try to make sure that Patrick Leahy sees, not just circumstantial evidence, but proof that the Bush-Cheney administration is lying about the key arguments they're trying to sell to the public to justify the invasion of Iraq. They put themselves on the line, they put themselves at risk because they apparently thought it was important for the truth to be known and they get Leahy to go read both of those files, and he just does nothing, nothing, to tell the public. He's just like, “Yeah, I'm going to vote no.” He didn't even tell his fellow senators. He didn't say a word. 

How pathetic is that? How cowardly is that? You run for the Senate, you're a career politician, you're old, you're in your 23rd term or whatever. Who cares? But don't you have any sense of duty at all? 

I don't want to be naive. I get that these are scummy politicians, very conniving. The more they stay around Washington, probably the fewer principles they believe they can operate on, the more kind of just pragmatic and cunning or whatever they become. But you're talking here about the most serious war that the United States has fought since it left Vietnam and you have the evidence in your hands that the government is lying yet again, like they did with the Vietnam War and the Gulf of Tonkin, and you just sit and say nothing? 

But there's a counterexample. When Daniel Ellsberg discovered the Pentagon Papers in the late 1960s, a multi-volume, tens of thousands of pages compiled by the Pentagon, the Pentagon Papers concluded and members of the highest levels of the government also knew under Lyndon Johnson and then Richard Nixon that there was no way the U.S. could win the war in Vietnam; at most, they could fight to a standstill. Yet they were constantly telling the public that was growing tired of this war, like, “Hey, we're losing all our young men who are being drafted, we're killing huge numbers of people, we're spending tons of money, there's social unrest. What is going on?” So, the Pentagon would say, “Oh, don't worry. We're close to winning. We're like six months away from winning. We're making immense progress.” In the Pentagon Papers, though, they were saying the exact opposite. They knew they could not win, so it's the same thing. 

Daniel Ellsberg had proof in his hands that the American government was lying to the people about the Vietnam War. Ellsberg had a very high position in the government. He had a PhD in nuclear policy from Harvard, zand he worked at the highest levels of the Rand Corporation, had some of the most sensitive documents inside the government and he did what Patrick Leahy wouldn't do.

He wasn't a senator; he didn't have any sort of parliamentary immunity, but he tried to get members of Congress to read it on the floor, as he couldn't, he went to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and they published parts of it. But then finally, he found Senator Mike Gravel, a Republican from Alaska, who was like, “No, you know what? I have parliamentary immunity, and this is what it's for. The public has a right to know that the American government is lying.” 

By the way, Daniel Ellsberg was charged with espionage, they tried to imprison him for life and the only reason his case was dismissed was because the Nixon administration was discovered to have burglarized the office of his psychoanalyst to try to find dirt on the private life of Daniel Ellsberg and the judge, because of that misconduct, dismissed the case, but had the judge not done so, Daniel Ellsberg probably would have been in prison for the rest of his life. He just died about 18 months ago at the age of 94. 

I had the honor of working with him when we created the Freedom of the Press Foundation together, he was unbelievably smart. One of the smartest people I've ever met. And even at like ‘91 or ‘92, he would attend these board meetings we had at the Freedom the Press foundation and just present the most complex arguments possible. 

So, he got Senator Gravel to read it from the floor of the Senate, and this is what that kind of bravery looks like. 

Video. Sen. Mike Gravel, US Senate Chamber. June 21, 1971.

So, that was the prelude to him then reading the Pentagon Papers into the record. You can be uncomfortable with, or even mock if you want, the very emotional display of Senator Gravel there. He was crying in the middle of that statement. But I would suggest that that is a far more admirable, noble and understandable reaction than what Senator Leahy did. 

I mean, every day, if you're a senator in the late 1960s, early 1970s, you're getting intelligence briefings about how unbelievably horrific the Vietnam War is: 58,000 Americans killed, two million Vietnamese, at least, killed. I mean, just the use of biological agents like Agent Orange, it was a brutal, savage, barbaric war, and the people who were in there, in the middle of the jungles and rivers of Vietnam, had no idea why they were fighting, why they were being killed on the other side of the world. 

So, if you're aware of information that the public can perhaps use to understand they're being lied to and hopefully stop the war, I think it's absolutely commendable to think about what's happening to human beings. I mean, that's a humanistic response. 

He didn't just cry about it, he actually tried to do something about it. Even though they have parliamentary immunity, reading top-secret Pentagon documents about a war in the middle of Washington, D.C., you would never know for certain that that's going to be honored. 

Here in Brazil, there's just a very similar parliamentary immunity privilege that people in Congress and the Senate enjoy. A couple of months ago, a member of Congress went to the microphone to speak at the tribunal where he heavily criticized the authoritarian chief judge of the Supreme Court, even though he's not technically the chief judge; he acts that way, Alexandre de Moraes. And then, shortly after, Alexandre de Moraes ordered the police to investigate him and to try to convict him for having spoken there. And their argument was, “Yeah, they have parliamentary immunity, but it's not absolute.” 

There's another case that I'm very familiar with, that I've had personal dealings with, that to this day sickens me and I just want to tell you about. 

For about two or three years before the Snowden reporting started, before Edward Snowden risked his liberty to come forward and show his fellow citizens the truth about how the government was spying on them with no limits and no warrants, and risking his life in prison to do it, two different senators, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, went around hinting that, “Oh, the NSA is doing some really bad stuff that if the American public knew about it, would be enraged by,” but they never said what it was. They could have done what Senator Gravel did and gone to the fore, but no, they just kept hinting. They would write emails, be in interviews, they would go write up ads saying, “Oh, if you only knew how they were interpreting the Patriot Act and what they were allowing the NSA to do, you would be enraged.” But they didn't have the courage to say it. 

And it was only once Snowden came forward and we started publishing reporting about what the NSA was doing based on his courageous act, did they start coming forward and say things. The headline of The Washington Post, July 28, 2013, is: “With NSA revelations, Sen. Ron Wyden’s vague privacy warnings finally become clear”. 

I mean, you know what? I reported on this topic for three years. It was a very important part of my career. I still pay very close attention to this violence debate but I could barely get through that. It was so ambiguous, so bereft of anything substantive that you could really understand what the government was doing, because he, too, was just a coward and then the minute we came out with that report, he's like, “I tried everything.” Yeah, everything except disclosing what you could have disclosed to let the American people know way before Edward Snowden came forward, so that he didn't have to spend his life in prison or Russia. 

People in the government, in the intelligence community, were trying to alert the public through Leahy that this proof existed, but he was too much of a coward to do anything about it. And so were Senators Wyden and Udall, whereas Senator Gravel wasn't. 

I just want to say the final thing: when Edward Snowden did their job for them and he comes forward, he doesn't dump it all on the internet, he is as careful as he can be, he gives it to journalists with very conservative instructions about only to use this very carefully, don't put anybody in danger, only use it to reveal to the public what they should know. And then he, of course, gets immediately indicted on multiple felony charges, including the Espionage Act, which would send him to prison for the rest of his life. 

They would ask Senator Wyden and Senator Udall, “Well, he revealed what you said should have been revealed. What do you think of him? Are you defending him? Do you think the prosecution would be dropped?” And they'd be like, “I'm not really going to talk about Snowden. I mean, he disclosed classified information. You can't have that.” – basically calling him a criminal for doing what he did only because they were too afraid to. 

These people are propellant. They'll let wars happen rather than step forward and confront any sort of risk or warrantless unconstitutional eavesdropping, as the courts ruled on American citizens with no warrants. And that's the kind of people that, unfortunately, with some exceptions, but very few, get to Washington and sit in both houses of Congress. 

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All right, here's the next question, from @Andante423: 

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It's a great question. Thank you. 

Just to give you the context, because it's so important, all of you, of course, remember when Trump just picked up, ICE picked up, 238 Venezuelans, and then, just in the middle of the night, shipped them out of the United States on a plane to an El Salvador prison. They filmed these people having been dehumanized, being humiliated, having their heads shaved, kneeling on the floor and it's almost certainly the case that at least some of them weren’t guilty of being gang members, but they're in this prison that's designed to be permanent. It runs on slave labor; it's one of the most abusive ones. 

But when this got to the Supreme Court, the Supreme court said by a 9-0 ruling – so that includes Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Gorsuch, Justice Kavanaugh, all the conservatives’ favorite judges – “Even if you want to use the Alien Enemies Act, you still have to give these people a due process. You have to give them a hearing, advance notice of their intent to be removed and then their opportunity to go into court and present evidence that they’re not a gang member.” 

So, they already said you have to give them a court hearing; in this court hearing, the judges should decide two things. Number one: Does Trump have the right to invoke the Alien Enemies Act? It's supposed to be a wartime statute. It's only for wartime. The only three times it was invoked previously were the War of 1812, World War I and World War II. 

Just to give you a feel for how extremist this power is, that's what FDR used to order all Japanese Americans interned in concentration camps because they were suspected of being loyal to Japan, which is generally considered one of the most shameful acts of the 20th century – but at least there was a real war going on. 

When the lawyers for the Venezuelan detainees sued in federal court to argue that this law was invalidly invoked and they weren't gang members, they got the best judge they could have gotten. They got a judge appointed by Donald Trump in his first term. So, he's a Trump-appointed judge and you can imagine how conservative judges Trump appoints from Texas are. 

Yet that's the judge who yesterday said that there's no legal foundation for adopting and invoking the Alien Enemies Act because we're not actually in war. 

The Trump administration had to concoct a theory and their argument was we're basically at war with these international drug gangs that are invading our country. They're like an invading army. 

Here's the ruling from this Trump-appointed judge issued yesterday. 

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There you see the caption. It is J.A.V., which is one of the Venezuelan detainees that they want to deport, versus Donald Trump. It's quite long, but it's not actually a long opinion. You can read it. The link is here.

It explains why, based on the statute, the president cannot invoke this law, because it's only for wartime and we're not at wartime. It's as simple as that. 

I've seen a lot of conservatives questioning why the courts get to decide this. In part, it's because that's been how the Supreme Court and the judicial power have been interpreted for more than 200 years, going back to Marbury v. Madison, and if you think about it, it has to be this way. 

The purpose of the Constitution is to limit the powers of the federal government, to limit the powers of the president and Congress. The government can't do this, it can't do that, it cannot do the other thing. So, if the president ignores the constitution, let's say Joe Biden orders that all Trump supporters be rounded up and imprisoned with no trial, obviously a violation of the constitution, if you can't go to the courts and seek relief and ask the courts to declare that unconstitutional, who does that then? Where do you go? Where do you get relief? The president just starts ordering his political enemies imprisoned with no trial, no due process. Of course, it's the courts who have to say this is unconstitutional, therefore, it can't be done. 

That's how our system works. And it's all balanced. It's not like the courts are the supreme branches that sometimes people try and claim. It's the president who appoints the judges who are on the courts. The Senate has to confirm them. If they start abusing their power, they can be impeached. And federal court judges have been impeached before, not often, but they can, and they have been. 

On top of that, the courts really have no way to execute their decisions. They don't have an army, they don't have guns, they don't have any way to force a president. The president or Congress respects the credibility of the courts, and that's why court decisions are abided by. But if you're going to have a constitution and a set of laws, you need to have somebody who interprets what those are and who decrees what they are. You can't ask the president to rule in his own case, like, “Hey, Mr. President, are you violating the law? Are you violating the Constitution?” 

Obviously, tons of conservatives, many times, under Clinton, under Obama, under Biden, ran into court and asked federal court judges to put a stop to what those administrations were doing. 

It is true that there are a lot more of those rulings coming under Trump. You could make the argument that it’s because he has so many new policies that have tested and pushed the limits of the law. But that's how our system works. It works that way under every president. I do think picking people up in our country and sending them for life in prison in a country they have nothing to do with and have never been to, from where they'll never get out, is an extremist power and we definitely need judicial review. 

As the Court said, the president, despite not being able to use the Alien Enemies Act, has all the legal authority in the world to deport people who are illegally in the country. There is another set of laws, the Immigration and Nationality Act and others. That's how President Obama deported millions of people. He didn't use the Alien Enemies Act; he used the set of laws that are normally used for that. That's what the court is saying: it doesn't mean you can't deport people in the country illegally, it's your obligation, your right and your duty to do that, you just can't use this wartime power to do so because we're not at war, as the statute describes it. 

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All right, this one is from @MarcJohnson125, who says: 

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All right, so just to set the stage for this, so you can see what happened, for those of you who haven't, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was walking on the street toward the Capitol, and it's very common for journalists to work there. That's one of the places you can ask members of Congress questions, even if they don't invite you into their office or agree to an interview. It's very often done. So, the reporter's not doing anything wrong here at all, I don’t think, but this is how Congresswoman Omar reacted: 

Video. Ilhan Omar, The Daily Caller. May 1, 2025.

Okay, it was a little bit of a snarky question. That's okay. Reporters can be snarky. They don't have to be super deferential, super respectful. He didn't assault her; he didn't do anything. But in return, yeah, she used a naughty word. It's a word you tell your nine-year-old kid not to use, but adults use that word. She wasn't aggressive about it. She wasn't violent, she didn't attack him, she didn't threaten him. He asked this question, she was bothered by it and she says, “I think you should fuck off.” And then he said, “Excuse me, what?” She didn't backtrack at all. 

And that was it, maybe not the best way to handle a journalist, I'll certainly accept that. Maybe a member of Congress should conduct themselves with more, whatever, decorum, if you want to say that. I mean, Trump campaigned throughout 2024 using every curse word he could think of in his rallies. So let's not invoke decorum unless the politicians you most admire are actually adhering to it as well. 

Here was Nancy Mace, who was questioned by a constituent, not a journalist even, but a constituent in her home district when she was at some sort of drugstore and here's what happened. 

Video. Nancy Mace, X. April 19, 2025.

All right, that seems unhinged to me, to be honest. He was very polite. He kept his distance. He wasn't the slightest bit aggressive. It's part of the duty of members of Congress and she's like very aggressive, right from the beginning, very hostile and out of nowhere, by the way, “I voted for gay marriage twice.” Why would you say that? I mean, yeah, he is pretty clearly gay but why would you bring that up? Why does that even enter your brain? And then by the end of it, she used the F-word for, I don't know, 10 times maybe, probably, and said other things as well. 

So, if you're going to be very upset by Ilhan Omar using an f-word with a journalist – we all know journalists deserve the greatest deference, the highest amount of respect – if that's the sort of thing that you really want to hold politicians to, like no naughty words, then you ought to be complaining about Trump, who curses more than any politician I've ever seen. And it doesn't bother me, by the way. Or what Nancy Mace did, which is, of all those things, like the most unhinged. 

Here's Charlie Kirk, yesterday, after he saw the video:

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Piers Morgan, the British subject who loves to spend his time commenting on American politics:

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Here's Libs of TikTok, always the beacon of perfect politeness and civility and respect for others. She says:

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That wasn't the question: whether they're going to. He said, “Should they?” Do you think that more should go? As I said, it was a snippy question, but who cares? 

These are the people – the Trump movement, the American right, Trump himself – who spent 10 years calling journalists the “enemy of the people,” which I don't disagree with and never bothered me. In fact, I can make an argument about why that's legitimate. But still, that's some very aggressive, hostile rhetoric to use about journalists. Republican politicians over the last 10 years have frequently scorned and insulted journalists. Trump insults every journalist who asks him a question. Everyone. And now they’re going to turn around and be like “A politician should not speak to a journalist in this manner. Journalists deserve the highest respect. She has no class.” 

How about Nancy Mace? Does she have class? Does Donald Trump have class? This is the kind of thing I really can't stand. I really can’t stand it. I just have some consistent standards, especially on these kinds of trivial issues, and to act like Ilhan Omar is some kind of heathen, some kind of threat to society! “She doesn't have gratitude toward America.” She's an American citizen. Yeah, she was born in another country and became an American citizen and the same is true of Elon Musk and Melania Trump and a lot of other people. She's still a full citizen like anybody else is.

To be honest, I thought what Ilhan Omar did was funny. I mean, I kind of thought that the whole thing with Nancy Mace was sort of funny. I think Trump is funny; like, loosen up. The rectum doesn't always have to be, like, so tightly closed when you're pretending to be offended by things. I think we want our politicians to be more human. This is how people speak. 

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All right, one last question. It’s from @Sambista. 

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So yeah, they're all doing great actually. All the ones you named and all the other dogs that you've gotten to know they're doing very well. I appreciate your asking. And yeah, I actually wish I could find a way to integrate the dogs into the show more, or something like wander around. Maybe Friday night is a good night to do it. We'll think about it. But yeah, appreciate your asking. 

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